John Moore

In boom times, solutions providers talk of opening new business lines and offices. In lean times, they just want customers to open their wallets a crack. A bill before Congress would provide small businesses incentives to do just that. At least thats what a newly launched coalition is hoping. The Alliance for Small Business Investment […]

When Ingram Micro decided to create a new SMB program, the distributor asked its reseller customers what they wanted. And then they asked them again. And again. Ingram already had a well-regarded SMB program in its Venture Tech Network, but that program, with its protected reseller territories, was limited to 450 members. Last June, the […]

It sounds like a win-win scenario. Product vendors roll out scores of programs and promotions encouraging resellers and integrators to pursue the small and midsize business (SMB) space. Product vendors get hundreds or thousands of feet on the street via partners. Solutions providers get leads and marketing support from vendors, who extend their marketing reach, […]

A Fanatical SMB Focus Everything the program does should directly address the small or midsize business. Ad copy should specifically target small-business owners, not enterprise IT managers. Similarly, ROI case studies should be geared toward smaller businesses, not installations with thousands of seats. Ready-to-Run Marketing Campaigns Unless you have a captive ad agency, look for […]

Is it the end of end-to-end? Web integrators were once keen on spanning the services spectrum from branding to back-end integration. An emergence of companies able to develop an online brand, design a Web site, and integrate relevant applications seemed a promising trend. But MarchFirst had been an end-to-end standard bearer only to end up […]

Pascal LeTiec, a longtime integration executive in France, had a notion that the application service provider (ASP) model would be the next big thing. So last year, he started talking to executives at New York-based Mi8 Corp., an ASP specializing in messaging. The discussions first focused on partnering, but ultimately the parties decided that LeTiec […]

Tried and True With visions of dot-com dollars dancing in their heads, some solutions providers were all too eager to dump the old ways of doing business. Reseller business models were abandoned with gusto for the latest xSP variant. That was not the case for Forsythe Solutions Group Inc. The Chicago-area company was launched in […]

The alarming numbers come from Jupiter Media Matrix: Online buyers will return 90 million items worth $5.8 billion in 2005. Enter reverse logistics, the science of handling returned merchandise. Jupiter asserts that retailers must improve their “entire reverse logistics systems” to recoup the cost of returned items. Logistics providers, not surprisingly, are ready to offer […]

Four states this month will go “Live” with pilot systems for calculating and remitting sales and use taxes for both Internet and brick-and-mortar purchases. You can bet that partisans on both sides of the e-commerce tax debate will be closely watching the technology trials in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and Kansas. Why the interest? The […]

Chris Formant is only one of a number of Big Five consulting partners who have left to head struggling Internet-based firms. So far, according to industry observers, these former Big Fivers have had mixed success. “Its an age-old truism: Great consultants dont always make great executives,” says Tom Rodenhauser, a veteran industry analyst. “A Big […]

Services Turnabout While many integrators frolicked in the easy money of the Web craze, Primix was enduring what euphemistically could be called a character-building experience. The company, which went public as OneWare in 1996, hoped to make its money in Web-enabled application-development software but soon found the product business wasnt all it was cracked up […]

With payrolls declining at the highest rate in 10 years, it seems a bad time to be pursuing human-resources applications. But thats just what a few solutions providers are doing. Brand-name integrators, Web-services firms and smaller consultancies are cultivating partnerships with software vendors offering HR specialty apps. Consider the following: Accenture last week entered an […]